Corruption in the EU

[Borachio]

Because it makes sense, and brings more prosperity, to belong to a supranational economic entity?

Also, if you're in it, you've some chance of influencing how it behaves towards you. Outside it, you've no chance at all. And you're still going to be affected by the decisions it makes.

(This is the standard narrative, anyway. But I'm sure you're familiar with it.)

 

[Thorgalaeg]

There is a link to the full report in the article, it contains notes on methodology and other things. It's not based on a simple "poll" but a rather comprehensive survey across the whole Union.

...and the map is based in a simple "poll"

 

[Quackers]

I don't believe we should run our country on purely economic incentives.
After all, your position is sacrificing control of our affairs to make more money. I think that is immoral. Let our ultimate power rest in Westminster where the British people elect British people to decide on our own affairs. I'm sick of bowing down to Brussels/Strasbourg. At present the great majority of our population is sick of immigration from Eastern Europe but we simply cannot do anything about it due to laws made by body composed of mainly foreigners. We cannot control our own borders, how can we even define ourselves as a seperate country?

 

[Borachio]

That's certainly a point of view.

Immigration is easy enough to control if you want to. But you can't decry immigration on the one hand, and send out labour recruiters to Eastern Europe on the other. Well, you can. But not consistently.

 

[Quackers]

I don't send out labour recruiters to Eastern Europe...Not entirely sure what you mean here.

Still, we cannot control immigration thats the whole point. We're legally bound to let in as many EU citizens who want to live here. To prevent that, is to break the law.

 

[Verbose]

I'd say it's a huge amount of money. It is almost exactly equal to the Commission's entire annual budget. That means, if it wasn't lost to corruption, the Commission would be able to do twice as much.

But that's because the budget of the EU is 1% of the EU annual GDP. Which is tiny. Unless for some reason you're assuming ALL the EU corruption costs have some weird direct link to the EU central budget? But why would you? If the EU budget corruption is similar to the EU average, what's lost of the EU central budget would be more like 0,01% of the EU annual GDP.

For comparisons sake, the US federal budget is about 40%. Most EU national budgets are 40+%. The 1% EU central budget is teeny tiny by comparison, for now reflecting a rather less-than-ambitious scope for the EU.

Comparing it to the total GDP doesn't seem to mean much, imo.

Exactly. It would be preferable is the EU was 100% corruption free. Alas, it's only 99% so. (National mileage may vary.)

 

[Verbose]

I don't send out labour recruiters to Eastern Europe...Not entirely sure what you mean here.

Still, we cannot control immigration thats the whole point. We're legally bound to let in as many EU citizens who want to live here. To prevent that, is to break the law.

Maybe we should just swap the 2,2 million EU citizens living in the UK for the about 1,6 UK citizens living in the EU (Spain the big enchillada), since movement is such a problem?

The non-EU people otherwise in question for being in the UK (the great majority), isn't really part of this specific UK-EU equation, so the UK shutting the rest of the EU out of its country (while of course still expecting its citizens to be able to do what bloody well pleases them, with regard to the other EU states in this matter), would only marginally affect things in the UK.

 

[Yeekim]

I would say this is not a big number.

Sure it's a lot of money — on an individual, human scale.

But the EU annual GDP is on the level of 12 000 billion €. I.e. the budget for the EU and the figure for money lost to curruption is about 1% of the total GDP. So by that count, the EU is 99% corruption free. It would of course be preferable if it was 100% so, but how many things in this world is 100% anything? (That said, it would of course be really, really bad if this figure creeps higher than 1%, and considering how low it is, the probability for that is rather greater than the reverse — meaning cause for vigilance on this matter.)

There's also every reason to look sternly on in particular the Big Boys Spain and Italy, accounting for rather a lot of the obvious corruption.

I agree with Verbose here. As I usually do, come to think of it.

 

[Borachio]

I don't send out labour recruiters to Eastern Europe...Not entirely sure what you mean here.

Still, we cannot control immigration thats the whole point. We're legally bound to let in as many EU citizens who want to live here. To prevent that, is to break the law.

Well, when I say "you", I don't mean Mr Quackers. I mean the UK policy of some politicians decrying immigration (and in fact most of them do to some degree) in public, while simultaneously allowing or encouraging labour recruitment in Eastern Europe, is inconsistent. (I'm presuming an awful lot here, I'll admit - it's just how I tend to see things.)

Of course it's possible to control immigration while conforming to EU rules. How do you think Germany and France manage to do it? Why did all those Polish people laboriously make their way across Germany to arrive in the UK? It doesn't make much sense. Why bypass a wealthier country, where benefits are more generous, to seek work in crappy old UK?

The reason that immigration is largely uncontrolled in the UK is because the authorities don't want to control it, imo.

There is no reason why the government can't even figure out how many people come in, and go out, through Heathrow, for example. The figures are there. All the airlines know exactly how many people use their services, and yet the government doesn't!

Immigration, from an economic point of view, makes perfect sense. The overwhelming majority of immigrants are relatively wealthy, healthy, and well-qualified. Their net contribution is high. An aging native population needs an influx of young cheap already trained labour.

Then again, there's the issue of identity cards. In France, where they have them, it's relatively easy to control who employers employ. In the UK, where they don't exist, it's very hard. That's an additional reason for the camps at Sangatte (though that problem seems to have been sorted out). No?

 

[Verbose]

I agree with Verbose here. As I usually do, come to think of it.

The Great Swedish-Estonians Friendship Pact at work... Mouahahahaha!

(Incidentally, thanks mate.)

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I read the BBC article but I didn't dig deeper into their methodology. What I took away was that it asked respondents if they thought corruption was a problem, which seems an unreliable metric. A better question they asked was if they had been asked to pay or expected to pay a bribe, which yielded far lower 'yes' answers than the first question.

Is this study/article even reliable?

 

[Borachio]

http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/e-library/documents/policies/organized-crime-and-human-trafficking/corruption/docs/acr_2014_en.pdf

Methodology
Scope of the Report
As mentioned in the introduction this report defines corruption, in line with international legal
instruments as any ‘abuse of power for private gain’. Although the exact meaning and scope
of the concept are the object of academic debate, this implies that the Report covers two
aspects. First, it covers specific acts of corruption and those measures that Member States
take specifically to prevent or punish corrupt acts as defined by the law. Secondly, it covers
certain types of conduct and measures which impact on the risk of corruption occurring and
on the capacity of a State to control it. Consequently, the Report deals with a wide range of
issues associated with corruption, including, in addition to bribery, trading in influence, abuse
of office, aspects related to nepotism, favouritism, illegal lobbying, and conflict of interests.
The aim of this first EU anti-corruption report is to keep the focus on a limited number of key
corruption-related issues. Wider aspects are mentioned for contextual coherence.
Constitutional arrangements (degree of devolution of power, position of judiciary, prosecutors
vs executive branch), the organisation and quality of the civil service, active role of the state
in the economy, privatisation are relevant from a corruption point of view. The report does not
make any general value judgement on constitutional arrangements, or on how the boundary is
drawn between state and private ownership. Hence, it is neutral with respect to
decentralisation, but does look into whether adequate control mechanisms to manage
corruption risks are in place. The same applies to privatisation: the transfer of state assets in
private hands carries certain corruption risks, but may reduce long-term risks related to
corruption, nepotism and clientelism. The report looks only at whether transparent,
competitive procedures are in place to reduce the risk of corruption. Finally, there are
different legal and constitutional arrangements concerning the relation between prosecution
services and the executive power. The report is neutral with respect to the different models,
since it only examines whether the prosecutors are able to pursue corruption cases in an
effective manner.
Sources of information
The Commission was determined to avoid duplicating existing reporting mechanisms and
adding to the administrative burden on Member States which are subject to various resourceintensive
peer review evaluations (GRECO, OECD, UNCAC, FATF, Moneyval). The report
is therefore not based on detailed questionnaires or expert country visits. It is based on the
abundance of information available from existing monitoring mechanisms, together with data
from other sources including national public authorities, research carried out by academic
institutions, independent experts, think-tanks, civil society organisations etc.
Furthermore, the report draws on corruption-related information concerning a wide range of
policy areas (e.g. public procurement, regional policy,) coming from various Commission
departments and the relevant EU agencies (Europol and Eurojust). Studies and surveys were
specifically commissioned for the purpose of further extending the knowledge base in areas
relevant to the report. An extensive study on corruption in public procurement involving EU
funds, launched at the initiative of the European Parliament, was commissioned by OLAF. Its
findings fed into both the thematic chapter and the national chapters. Another study concerned
corruption in healthcare. Two Eurobarometer surveys were carried out in 2013: the first
targeted the general public, the second was done on a representative sample of companies in
each Member State. Data on corruption at regional level were drawn from the Study on
Quality of Government carried out by Gothenburg Quality of Government Institute. Finally,
the Commission has used information generated by research projects co-funded by the EU,
such as the National Integrity System reports carried out by Transparency International.
The EU Anti-Corruption Report also builds on the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism
(CVM), a post-accession follow-up mechanism for Romania and Bulgaria that is managed by
the European Commission. While these two mechanisms serve different purposes, the current
report draws on the extensive knowledge and lessons acquired in the CVM process and makes
references in the two country chapters accordingly. After the conclusion of the CVM
procedure, this report will continue to follow up on those issues which are relevant in the
context of corruption.

It's not immediately obvious to me that this report is flawed in any significant ways.

 

[Verbose]

I must say, in my jaded heart, I'm actually surprised that supposedly only the eqv. of 1% of the EU annual GDP is lost to corruption? Not sure what figure I expected, but certainly above THAT?

 

[Yoda Power]

Well the variation between countries is quite big and the more corrupt tend to be poorer.

 

[Akka]

Why has the UK teamed up with a load of corrupt Europeans?

It's been a big mistake since day one.

Actually, if you look at the map, you can notice that only Italy is a more corrupt country than the UK among the ones that were in the EEC when the UK joined.
So the question is rather the opposite : why did we let a bunch of corrupt islanders enter in the EU ? I agree it was a mistake.